You can tell a lot about a person by the way they walk and talk – in real life and in books. You can give your characters distinctive personalities with just a few words of dialogue or a habitual gesture.
Maybe your character is a social climber who feels compelled to enunciate her words and pepper her speech with words like “Dahling” or maybe you’re writing about a guy who believes he is the greatest gift to womankind and calls every female “Sweetheart”. You can give your character a trait that is uniquely theirs by using just one or two words consistently in the dialogue and mark them so well that your readers will be able to tell who is talking without the “so and so” said.
Think about phrases that have been popularized in TV and movies – “you got some “splaining to do”, “to the moon Alice”, “d’oh”, “cowabunga”, "yippe-ki-yay, motherf--ker", “yabba dabba do” and “oh Rob” – each time you hear one of these phrases chances are you have a pretty clear image of a particular character in your mind. When you introduce your character to your readers and make a particular expression or phrase part of them, then your readers will “see” that character every time they read that phrase in your story.
If you are dealing with a character whose lack of education, social standing or mastery of the English language is lacking, they are still going to speak like everyone else for the most part, just infuse their dialogue with the occasional idiom, mispronounced word, or unique phrase that fits their personality. An uneducated adult may use the words “ain’t” or “would of” (instead of would have) occasionally when he or she is speaking; the guy who s trying to be hip may refer to everyone as “hey dude”; and the non-English speaking character may mix their idioms with literal translations or synonym s which appear out of place (such as “quick food” instead of “fast food”).
If you have an English as the second language character, there is no need to give every word an accent, just sprinkle an occasional foreign word or pronunciation in to the conversation. “Perhaps mademoiselle would appreciate a simple Bordeaux?” or “The Chihuahua is a leetle dog” is enough to hint at a French or Spanish speaking character. Characters who shout out four letter curse words every time the going gets tough, knocks on wood not to jinx themselves, or begins to stutter under stress have very specific identifiable traits.
Along with dialogue the character’s eye contact, or lack of, can say a lot about their honesty; hold his head high and you’ve instilled a proud streak; let a character jump at every noise and you can almost feel her nervousness. Even if you have two characters who come from similar backgrounds and educations, once you give each of them a unique trait, you’ve made them individuals. Use language and gestures typical of the characterization sparingly, readers should not have to muddle through entire blocks of poor grammar or accented words. A little dab here and there will do it.
Writing exercise: Take a block of dialogue and text from something you’ve written or recently read – rewrite any dialogue and pertinent narrative so that the main character is a different nationality ; do this a few times with at least 3 different origins.
Writing prompt: Make a list of common expressions you use In your daily speech that are pretty much yours and yours alone.
